Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

I turned in my seat. ‘Are you asking for a fist in the face before we’ve even left the car?’

‘But of course: I do like to make things spicy.’ A wink. ‘Now, is there any chance we can exit this two-door motorised sardine can before I lose all feeling in my legs?’

‘One punch and you’ll lose all feeling in your everything.’ But I got out anyway and folded the passenger seat forward so he could clamber into the rain like a pinstriped stick insect.

Huntly pulled a rainbow-coloured golf brolly from the rear footwell and popped it open. Standing there, brushing at the damp shoulders of his jacket.

I went back in for the two new-ish umbrellas I’d liberated from the station’s Lost-and-Found. Handed the collapsible one to Alice. ‘Here.’

She pressed the button and it sprung out, the canopy opening with a whooomp . A big smile spread across her face. ‘It’s a ladybird !’ Bright red with black dots, a happy face, and sticky-out antennas that wobbled in the rain. It even had six short dangly legs.

‘Thought you’d like it.’ Mine was a plain black job.

Huntly finished preening, then snapped his fingers. ‘Now, dear colleagues, join me at the crime scene, and witness the glory of my unfettered material-evidence genius!’ Marching off with his nose in the air.

It was going to be a very long day.

‘Well, isn’t this fun ?’ Huntly hunched under his multicoloured brolly, face all puckered and lined, arms drawn in against his chest as he picked his way through the tussocks of pale-green and yellowy-brown grass and the rain hissed down. ‘Remind me: whose idiotic idea was it to come out here?’

Our patch of waste ground made a gloomy strip, with the back of William Terrace and Denholm Road on one side, and the fifty-foot cliff that separated them from McArthur Drive on the other. The railway line soared above our heads, held aloft on substantial steel pillars painted in various shades of rust-flecked black. So thickly coated that the rivets were barely visible on some sections.

A long line of bare branches stuck up above the garden fences — beech and sycamore, with broom spilling out in dark-green profusion. The grey ranks of dead nettles wrapped around with curled bramble barbed wire.

Be a miracle if daylight ever made its way down here.

What a horrible place to die...

Alice wandered on ahead, her ladybird brolly thrumming in the downpour. Looking up and down, left and right, turning on the spot, then heading off again. Henry sulked along after her, tail down, whimpering and complaining on the end of his leash. Getting soggier and soggier.

‘First observation,’ Huntly pointed at the back of the buildings to our right, ‘the only way you’d know a child was playing here is if you saw them from the windows, there. Or you were here too.’

I shook my head. ‘Alice already said that, back at the briefing.’

‘Has someone done door-to-doors?’

‘No, because not one police officer in Oldcastle has ever worked a murder investigation.’ I gave him the most sarcastic smile I could muster. ‘You muppet.’

‘Very well, I see I shall have to increase my levels of brilliance.’ His arm swept north, following the line of the tracks above. ‘The only entrances to this horrible strip of yuck are where we came in, and up there at Saint Damon of the Green Wood. And it’s not as if you’d use this as a rat run to or from anywhere. So why would you be here?’

Should’ve gone with my first thought and thrown him in the river.

‘The answer, my dear ex-DI, is “illicit reasons”.’ Huntly picked his way across to the base of one of the pillars, running the toe of his polished black brogues through the grass around the base. ‘Which means the three “D”s: Drink, Drugs, and-slash-or Depravity.’

A thin metallic pinging rang through the air above, getting louder, like a metal rod drawn down a piano wire. Then rattling. And the shadow of a train growled overhead, adding a small shower of dust and grit to the rain.

I checked my watch: 08:32, so that would be the ten past eight to Aberdeen. Late again.

Huntly pulled his shoulders in, squatting beneath his brolly as if trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Only standing up again once the train had passed. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I’m never keen to be spattered with human sewage. And once the train has left the station...’ He scuffed his shoe through the grass again. ‘And while we’re on the subject, who ever heard of Saint Damon? No such beast exists, and I speak as someone who’s studied the Catholic faith fairly intensively.’

‘You’re a Catholic?’

‘Well, not any more, obviously — their views on homosexuality being somewhat Levitican — but I was quite the altar boy when I was younger. Had a singing voice that would put joy in the bleakest of hearts. Even yours .’ He shrugged. Curled his top lip. ‘That’s the trouble with Oldcastle, you lot have no respect for proper church procedures. You can’t just go about making up your own saints without formal permission. Saint Jasper, Saint Damon, Saint Ailsa of the Immaculate Death, Saint Whatever-That-Church-In-The-Wynd is called.’

‘Saint Fraser of Ochenbrook.’

‘It’s sacrilegious. No wonder Pope Innocent the Twelfth excommunicated the lot of you... Aha!’ He stared at the grass where his toecap was, then pinned his brolly between his cheek and shoulder — freeing up both hands to snap on a pair of purple nitrile gloves. Bent and retrieved a used syringe, holding it aloft like a prize salmon. ‘Voila.’

‘That supposed to prove something?’

A condescending smile. ‘That this place is being used for the consumption of drugs, my dear ex-Detective Inspector.’

‘Wow!’ I slapped a hand to my cheek. ‘You — don’t — say? A patch of waste ground in Kingsmeath being used by druggies? Shock, and indeed, horror! Who would ever have guessed?’

Huntly’s eyes narrowed. ‘A chap could go off you, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Every bloody park, kids’ playground, and bus shelter from here to Kings Drive is awash with people shooting up. Be more of a surprise if you found somewhere that wasn’t.’

He dropped the syringe, rubbed his squeaky purple fingertips together. ‘Fine. Then you tell me what Gòrach was doing here.’

‘Found it!’ Alice’s voice wafted back to us, through the rain. ‘This is where Andrew died.’

‘Maybe Gòrach followed him in. Maybe he snatched Andrew off the street and brought him here. Or maybe he knew kids played here so he turns up, hoping some kid will happen past.’

‘Or maybe he’s already here, shooting up, and then he sees Andrew Brennan and decides to make his high that bit more dangerous?’

‘ARE YOU TWO COMING, OR WHAT?’

I shrugged, followed the sound of her voice, damp grass clutching at my trouser legs. ‘If you can afford a car, or vehicle, why the hell would you come here to cook up? Why not go somewhere safe, secluded, warm?’

Huntly lumbered along beside me. ‘Well, perhaps the good doctor is right and Gòrach lives locally? Or he comes back here to connect to his past...’ A frown. ‘To be honest, all this behavioural analysis stuff is somewhat beneath my skill level. I make deductions based on facts and realities, I don’t do speculative nonsense. What we know is that Gòrach was here and Andrew Brennan was here, and they can only have come through the gate we did, or the one by the improperly named church.’

Alice stood in a small trampled circle of grass, frowning at the grubby remnants of a large teddy bear someone had cable-tied to a wooden fencepost. One of its arms was missing, the stuffing poking out of multiple holes in its legs. Its stomach spilling out into its lap. A handful of floral tributes lay scattered around it, as if tossed about in a fit of rage, the grimy cellophane wrappers of long-dead bouquets marking where people had paid their respects and not come back to clean them up afterwards.